Growing up

But as we enter the working world and establish lives off of the playground we begin to see something strange: the smartest people don’t necessarily do the best.

Or at least the people we thought as smartest. The math guy, the chess guy, the spelling bee champion–whatever.

When you’re young you just assume those are going to be the most successful people in your group.

Evolution

In adult life the question starts to change, and I think it changes based on one’s value system. But one thing that doesn’t change is the abandoning of intelligence as the supreme metric.

For some the game becomes:

How successful of a family can I raise?

The highest intelligence doesn’t necessarily get you the best result there. It helps, but it’s not as important as having a successful, happy family.

Someone else might ask:

How much can I improve education for girls in Somalia?

This requires some intelligence, but mostly hinges on having a great heart and tons of determination.

My particular brand of value is producing output that is intellectually or philosophically useful in some way–particularly in creating or clarifying ideas that can be used as levers to solve problems. Most importantly the big problem of how best to live.

The catch all, however, is the creation of value.

So I’d say that the adult version of “he’s hella smart” is (or I’d say should be) that “he creates tons of value”.

The race car analogy

So here’s an analogy that I thought of this morning as I was waking up.